17304
|
As causation links across time, grounding links the world across levels [Schaffer,J]
|
|
Full Idea:
Grounding is something like metaphysical causation. Just as causation links the world across time, grounding links the world across levels. Grounding connects the more fundamental to the less fundamental, and thereby backs a certain form of explanation.
|
|
From:
Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], Intro)
|
|
A reaction:
Obviously you need 'levels' for this, which we should take to be structural levels.
|
17308
|
Explaining 'Adam ate the apple' depends on emphasis, and thus implies a contrast [Schaffer,J]
|
|
Full Idea:
Explaining why ADAM ate the apple is a different matter from explaining why he ATE the apple, and from why he ate THE APPLE. ...In my view the best explanations incorporate ....contrastive information.
|
|
From:
Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], 4.3.1)
|
|
A reaction:
But why are the contrasts Eve, or throwing it, or a pear? It occurs to me that this is wrong! The contrast is with anything else which could have gone in subject, verb or object position. It is a matter of categories, not of contrasts.
|
9762
|
We should focus less on subjects of experience, and more on the experiences themselves [Parfit]
|
|
Full Idea:
It becomes more plausible, when thinking morally, to focus less upon the person, the subject of experiences, and instead to focus more upon the experiences themselves.
|
|
From:
Derek Parfit (Reasons and Persons [1984], §116)
|
|
A reaction:
This pinpoints how Parfit moves from a view of persons in terms of continuity of consciousness to a utilitarian morality. It brings out nicely what is wrong with utilitarianism - the reductio of a great ball of nice experiences, with no one having them.
|
17305
|
I take what is fundamental to be the whole spatiotemporal manifold and its fields [Schaffer,J]
|
|
Full Idea:
I myself would prefer to speak of what is fundamental in terms of the whole spatiotemporal manifold and the fields that permeate it, with parts counting as derivative of the whole.
|
|
From:
Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], 4.1.1)
|
|
A reaction:
Not quite the Parmenidean One, since it has parts, but a nice try at updating the great man. Note the reference to 'fields', suggesting that this view is grounded in the physics rather than metaphysics. How many fields has it got?
|
17307
|
Nowadays causation is usually understood in terms of equations and variable ranges [Schaffer,J]
|
|
Full Idea:
The leading treatments of causation work within 'structural equation models', with events represented via variables each of which is allotted a range of permitted values, which constitute a 'contrast space'.
|
|
From:
Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], 4.3.1)
|
|
A reaction:
Like Woodward's idea that causation is a graph, this seems to be a matter of plotting or formalising correlations between activities, which is a very Humean approach to causation.
|